In November, Warren Buffet bought Texas-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $26.3 billion dollars. His analysis shows in our lifetimes trains are going to be the most effective, fuel-efficient and green means available to transport cargo from point A to point B. For anyone investing in railroads, trains are going to be a source of “steady and certain” growth.

“Steady and certain” is more than an economic valuation for trains. Their familiar sound is one of purpose and flow.

I’ve always lived in towns where trains pass through. In Croton-on-Hudson NY, where I once lived, their sound was particularly melodious. Trains travelled right alongside the Hudson River and the hills on both sides brought out a deep, rich sound.

If you search YouTube for Croton-0n-Hudson, what appears is an entire page of videos devoted to trains. Apparently, from the comments, I’m not the only one to find something comforting and reassuring in their sight and sound. Here’s one of those videos. See if it has the same effect on you it has for many of us.

Let me say at the outset this is a nondenominational blog. I’ve been reading Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life which might sound like a self-help book, but it’s not.

Whereas self-help books tell you purpose, essential change or course correction in life comes from within, the point of view here is you’re not here by accident. Your purpose in life has already been individually thought out and finding it happens, not by looking within, but surrendering to something larger than yourself.

It’s also deals with community as good as any book I’ve read. One reason, as the book devotes a chapter, is we are here to belong. Because, through belonging, we learn and put in practice the seven characteristics of fellowship which are to:

Share our true feeling (authenticity)

Encourage one other (mutuality)

Support each other (sympathy)

Forgive each other (mercy)

Speak the truth in love (honesty)

Admit our weaknesses (humility)

Make group a priority (frequency)

Although it could be read faster, the book is meant to be read and considered a chapter a day for 40 days because 40 days is considered a time spiritually significant for transformation.

There have been 133,000,000 blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002. They have been read by 346,000,000 people since 2008. There are 900,000 blog posts within any given 24 hour period. Positive perceptions of a company increase by 36% if they have a blog on their web site.

With numbers so large, it may seem no individual blog really matters. I believe just the opposite. It’s significant proof of our need to belong and commitment to fellowship. So, if you blog or you read blogs, keep it up and keep the seven characteristics in mind.

In a year where we’re more interested in the best deals and with more reason to be, here’s a snapshot of where we’ll look this holiday season before we hit the stores (according to Deloitte)

40% turn to print

29% look at flyers

27% check out websites focused on holiday deals

24% go to retailers’ websites

Newspapers, magazines and flyers are still the most popular. The internet is not far behind and growing faster while print and flyers slowly decline. This means we’ll do more shopping online than ever before we buy offline.

Many x-mas info and retailers sites now have connections to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MomsLikeMe , TriangleMom2Mom and MyBlackFridayDeals. This means we’ll go to stores with more recommendations, reviews and advice from others and we’ll be more certain about what we’re going to buy. We’ll feel more satisfied about having made smarter decisions. We’ll spend less time in crowded stores.

This means this holiday season the two biggest purchase drivers, word on mouth and content on the web, will be put to use more often and in more measurable ways. Kasey Lobaugh, a principle at Deloitte’s retail practice says “if you send out a URL on Twitter, you know how many people clicked on that URL.”

And it costs a whole lot less than print and flyers for manufacturers to know a lot more about what it takes to find advocates for their brands.

This means we should expect to see manufacturers offer great deals that we actually want for many more Xmas’ because it’s more affordable and consumers will reward the ones who do a good job at it with more business.